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The Double Slit, Question: Why Does a Detector Force the Wave to Collapse?


I couldn't help but reproduce this from a Facebook post within a Group called 'Quantum Physics' of which I am a member. The questioner posted the title above asking for answers about the Double Slit Experiment, obviously a physics student of sorts. (If you are not familiar with the experiment or need a refresher see the link). In the novel, Iniquity & The Separation of Being, I discuss scientific dogma and its constraining effects on debate in this space, but would never guessed it to be so prolific. This forms my response to the administrator of the group....

Luke Fernandez: Fiona Myrglwitz, please understand very clearly that this is not merely my own 'unscientific' opinion as you seem to suggest... I am not sure whether you have heard of the likes of Niels Bohr, what about Eugene Wigner, Pascual Jordan, and even a gentleman by the name of John Wheeler...Does Roger Penrose ring any bells?.... The physicist Pascual Jordan, who worked with quantum guru Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in the 1920s, put it like this: "observations not only disturb what has to be measured, they produce it… We compel [a quantum particle] to assume a definite position." In other words, Jordan said, "we ourselves produce the results of measurements." Eugene Wigner wrote "It follows that the quantum description of objects is influenced by impressions entering my consciousness." Wheeler even entertained the thought that the presence of living beings, which are capable of "noticing", has transformed what was previously a multitude of possible quantum pasts into one concrete history. In this sense, Wheeler said, we become participants in the evolution of the Universe since its very beginning. In his words, we live in a "participatory universe." From the 1980s, the British physicist Roger Penrose suggests that the link might work in the other direction. In considering whether or not consciousness can affect quantum mechanics, he said, perhaps quantum mechanics is involved in consciousness...... So please do not correct me with banal text book accounts of this phenomena for I stand on the shoulders of giants.


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